Free The Order of the Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger Page A

already on fire?” one of Otto’s kids asked. “Won’t they die?”
    “Not the grown ones,” Otto said. “Their bark is special. When trees get really old, their bark develops these fire-retardant properties. It protects them from fires.”
    “It does not!” Kwame said.
    “Yeah, it does.”
    “But they’ll still be hurt, won’t they?” one of Otto’s kids said.
    “No,” Otto said. “They’ll survive.”
    “But they’ll still feel pain!” another kid said.
    “No,” Otto said. “They’re trees. Trees don’t feel pain.”
    “They do so!” Ian said.
    “No!” Otto said, losing his composure at last. “They don’t!”
    I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but even I could tell that Otto and the kids weren’t just talking about trees. They were burn survivors, and in some strange way, Otto and those kids were really talking about themselves.
    I looked at them, staring out across the lake in silence. Every single one of them was transfixed, like he was seeing a ghost, which I guess they kind of were. One way or another, they’d all seen that fire up close (well, except for Julian with his acne conglobata—but he was watching that fire pretty intently too).
    I looked at Otto. Now even he was being hypnotized by the smoke. I was the only one not spellbound by the sight. So I figured I should say something. But what? Part of me didn’t want to intrude on their moment, except it didn’t seem like a good moment. It felt like they were scared, stuck in place, unable to move forward. But it also didn’t seem right just to say, Okay, guys, time to push on! like I was pretending what was happening wasn’t happening at all.
    In the trees overhead, the crow cawed again.
    And suddenly, I had an idea.
    “The Lenape Indians have a legend about fire,” I said to the whole group. Otto glanced at me, curious as to what I was up to, but the kids were all still staring across the lake.
    It all started back when there were just animals on the Earth,” I went on. “Before humans—before seasons, even—back when the weather was always warm. But then, one day winter came, and snow fell for the very first time. At first, the animals liked it, but as it continued to fall they began to get cold. So they met together to figure out what to do. And in the end, they decided to send one of the animals to the distant home of the Creator, to ask him to stop the snow.”
    I looked around. The kids were still staring across the lake, but they seemed to be listening to me too (well, except for Ian, who was now busy kicking the stones from the collapsed fireplace).
    I had to think hard to remember the rest of the story. I was pretty sure it was even better than the one Web had told me about Hercules and Leo the Lion.
    “The animals were going to send Owl to see the Creator,” I said, “but they worried that he’d get confused in the daylight. And they couldn’t send Coyote, because they figured she’d get distracted. So they decided to send the most beautiful of all the animals, Rainbow Crow. Because back then, the crow had feathers with all the colors of the rainbow, and a singing voice that was the most beautiful of all the birds’.
    “Rainbow Crow agreed to go see the Creator, and flew high up into the sky, above the snow and wind and clouds and moon and stars. He flew for three days, and finally he reached his destination. But the Creator was too busy to see the crow. So Rainbow Crow started singing, and the sound was so beautiful that the Creator stopped what he was doing and came to Rainbow Crow and said, ‘By singing that song, you have given me a great gift. Now I want to give you a gift. ‘What shall I give you?’
    “Rainbow Crow said, ‘Please, Sir, it is so cold down on Earth. I would like you to stop the snow.’
    “The Creator said to the crow, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that, because the snow has a spirit of its own, as do the wind and the winter. But I can give you a gift to use against